When introducing scientific procedures or phenomena into your manuscript, a few scenarios can play out. These events can be as small as one thing that happens in a single scene in an overall non-sciency story, or you can have critical elements of your plot—or, indeed, the entire plot—depend on sound science. You might want to iron out the details in the planning stage, before you actually write anything, or while you’re outlining your plot; or you might want to wait until you’ve written the whole thing out to check if it works well. Either way, you want to make sure the science aspects you’ve planned your scene/plot around are correct and come across as realistic rather than trope-y and farfetched. The problem is, you’re not a scientist, so these things do not come easily to you, and a cursory Google search might not cut it.
That’s where my science consulting comes in: I will guide you through the science required to get through your scene or overall plotline the way you want it to go, in accordance with what your intended audience is going to need and expect. I will not write your scenes for you, but I will advise you on how to best present the science so that your audience understands it and can follow it without it seeming incongruent with the rest of your narrative. I will make recommendations as to how you can rearrange or change things as necessary if your original plan does not work for any reason. I can also do the necessary research for you if you do not know or do not have the time or patience to do such specific research yourself. If I believe I am not knowledgeable enough about a certain area of science to give you the guidance you need, I will advise you to look for a specialist or offer suggestions as to how to achieve the same result via a more general path.
One-on-one voice-only meetings over Skype, Zoom, or the teleconferencing software of your choice up to twice per week, 1 to 2 hours per meeting. Additional meetings can be arranged if you have any questions or require any clarification, as long as my schedule allows and I have enough time to prepare and research if needed.
There is no fixed number of meetings by design; how many meetings we have will depend on the size and scope of your project. You may request more meetings as long as you feel your project still requires my help, although if the problem to be fixed is too small for an hour-long meeting, I might suggest we hash them out via email rather than by teleconference.
If you’d like me to consult on a scene or full manuscript that has already been written, there will be an added fee for my first read-through of it, to identify and familiarize myself with any science elements that will be included in the consult; this read-through has a word-count-based fee similar to that of a science review. Time spent in preparation for these consultation meetings, following up via email, or researching for your project will be billed hourly on top of the fixed cost of the meetings.
Consulting meetings via teleconference will cost you $40 USD per session. An initial read-through of your manuscript or scene to identify and familiarize myself with any science elements that will be included in the consult will cost you $0.002 USD (0.2 cents) per word, or a base fee of $20 USD if it’s under 10,000 words; this fee will be will be added to and charged with the cost of our first meeting. Additional time spent preparing for meetings, following up via email, or researching for your project will cost you $15 per hour rounded up to the nearest hour, and it will be billed biweekly or when your consult is complete, whichever happens first.
Please note that I will only do science consulting on narrative works; I will not work on journalistic, academic, or workplace articles and reports, schoolwork of any kind, or other similar non-narrative manuscripts.
Say you have a scene, fragment, or a full manuscript that involves some sciency events, and you need to make sure all of them are correct or at least make sense within the context of your fictional universe before your work is ready for publication. You don’t mind making the corrections yourself, or doing the required research on your own, you just need someone else to point any errors or inconsistencies out to you so you can fix them. This is, essentially, what a science review is: almost like a proofread, but specifically for the STEM-related aspects of your manuscript.
You send me your scene, fragment, or full manuscript, and I read through it with a critical eye, marking science-related errors or inaccuracies. I will leave notes in the document telling you why each instance is incorrect or could be presented differently, and offer quick suggestions on how to correct it. This is all done through the Track Changes functionality in Microsoft Word, so that when I send the file back to you, you can take over the work of actually making these changes as you see fit.
The cost of a science review will depend on the length of your manuscript. I strongly recommend that you only get a science review if your manuscript has gone through at least some editing. If your manuscript is difficult to read or understand, I reserve the right to postpone your review until after you’ve done a round of editing on it. I can refer you to a freelance editor if needed. If I do a science review on your work and you still feel you need further help from me in order to correct it, you can upgrade your review to a science consultation according to the pricing described above; in that case, because I’ve already done a review on your manuscript, the fee for my initial read-through would be waived.
A science review will cost you $0.004 USD (0.4 cents) per word, or a base fee of $40 USD if it’s under 10,000 words. For manuscripts over 10,000 words, a $40 USD non-refundable deposit will be charged upon receipt, and the rest upon completion. I will answer any questions and clarify any doubts within reason via email for no extra fee; if you need more hands-on help, I may suggest you upgrade your service to a full-on science consultation.
Please note that I will only do science reviews on narrative works; I will not work on journalistic, academic, or workplace articles and reports, schoolwork of any kind, or other similar non-narrative manuscripts.
So you have a manuscript you’re very proud of and are looking to publish, but let’s be honest: you’ve been staring at the thing for so long, reading and editing and reworking over and over and over, that you can’t see your mistakes anymore. So you might be missing a typo here, a missing article there, some subject-verb disagreement every once in a while, but you just can’t tell anymore. This is when having a fresh pair of eyes look at your manuscript comes in handy, and that is what a proofreader does: find and fix those small errors so that your manuscript is ready for publication.
You send me your manuscript, and I read through it with a critical eye, correcting small errors, making comments if anything is not clear or reads weirdly, or marking revisions that would require further input on your part. This is all done through the Track Changes functionality in Microsoft Word.
The cost of a proofread will depend on the length of your manuscript. I strongly recommend that you only get your work proofread if your manuscript has already gone through a full edit; proofreading is meant as the very last step in the editing process and is not intended to fix character, plot, or style issues. If your manuscript is difficult to read or understand, or I believe it requires a more involved revision than a simple proofread, I reserve the right to postpone your proofread until after you’ve had it edited. I can refer you to a freelance editor if needed.
A proofread will cost you $0.003 USD (0.3 cents) per word, or a base fee of $30 USD if it’s under 10,000 words. For manuscripts over 10,000 words, a $30 USD non-refundable deposit will be charged upon receipt, and the rest upon completion.
I will proofread journalistic, academic, or workplace articles and reports, schoolwork of any kind, or other similar non-narrative manuscripts on a per-case basis, but I will not do any science revisions as part of that service.
Usually, when an author finishes a full draft of a narrative work that they expect to publish, they will have one or more people—just regular people, not necessarily editors or publishers—read the manuscript and give him or her feedback on what they liked and didn’t like, what worked for them and what didn’t, if anything needs to be added or removed or rearranged, or any other changes the author might make to improve the manuscript, just from the point of view of an average reader. These people are known as beta readers.
In most cases, beta readers work for free; they are the author’s friends, family, acquaintances, or volunteers recruited through their publishing company. However, these people also have busy lives with other priorities, and sometimes they might be unable to give you the feedback you requested, or give you enough detail for the feedback to be useful. Sometimes it’s difficult for them to be honest with their critique due to not wanting to seem impolite or too negative. And sometimes, especially if your beta readers are volunteers you don’t particularly know or are close to, there might be confidentiality issues.
So, while looking for unpaid beta readers is always a good first step (and encouraged!), there can be many benefits to paying for a beta reading—not the least of which is an assurance of the reliability and usefulness of the feedback, and confidence in them keeping that feedback 100% private. It also helps that beta readers like me, who have worked in the industry, have the advantage of having read manuscripts of all types, so we have a clearer idea of what works and doesn’t work, how to improve it, and what next steps it might need to make it better, particularly when it comes to the editing process.
You send me your manuscript, and I read through it with a critical eye. Once I’ve read it, I will write a feedback report (in PDF format, usually between 3-5 pages) detailing my opinion about your work’s readability, main concept, worldbuilding, overall plot and subplots, characters, dialogue, and other important aspects of your narrative that stand out to me. I will point out the positives and negatives, things I really liked and things I think you should fix or change, and what further work your manuscript may need in terms of editing or science review. No changes or comments will be done on the document itself, and for that reason you need not send me a Word file—a PDF will do just fine.
The cost of a beta reading will depend on the length of your manuscript. It is not necessary for your manuscript to have been edited before you submit it for a beta reading, but if if is difficult to read or understand, I will make a note of it in my feedback report. I can refer you to a freelance editor if needed.
A beta reading will cost you $0.002 USD (0.2 cents) per word, or a base fee of $20 USD if it’s under 10,000 words. For manuscripts over 10,000 words, a $20 USD non-refundable deposit will be charged upon receipt, and the rest upon completion.
I will answer any questions and clarify any doubts within reason via email for no extra fee; if you need more hands-on help, I may refer you to a freelance editor, as that would be beyond the scope of a beta reading.